Thursday, April 22, 2004

BayCon last weekend was good fun. Held at a fairly run-down motel 5 miles south of Exeter, staffed by underpaid migrant workers, with crumbling windowframes and peeling decor, nevertheless it offered gaming space and fairly cheap rooms for a large number of gamers, many of whom are personally large as well. Why do geeks always tuck their T-shirts into their jeans, no matter how big the beer-gut?

Anyway, I played lots of games, losing most of them, and failing to get into the top 100 list. At a convention with about 120 attendees, that's a pretty bad performance. Enjoyed trying some new games (new to me anyway) such as San Juan, Alhambra, Medici, Attika, and Age of Mythology. Nick played a 2-day epic game of GMT's Napoleonic Wars. I was woken by him when he finally staggered into our room at 5:30am Sunday morning, only to sit in bed punching out his new copy of Attika!

My favourite discovery of the weekend was a game I had taken along with me but never played - Scarab Lords. A really excellent two-player card game by Reiner Knizia, marred only by tatty American-style production values (how come Blue Moon, another similar Knizia game, which costs about the same money and is manufactured in Europe, has about 10-times better physical quality?)

Talking of Reiner, he was there apparently, but I never saw him. So I never got the chance to do a Waynes World on him ("We are not worthy!")